Education and Schools

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On February 19, 2013, the Equity and Excellence Commission, a federal advisory committee, released a report detailing the inequity in the American K-12 educational system and asking the Department of Education to take action. The Equity and Excellence Commission is made up of thought leaders in education such as Russlynn Ali, Michael Rebell, and Randi Weingarten, among many distinguished others. The Commission was responsible for advising the Secretary of Education on the disparities in educational opportunities that give rise to the achievement gap.

And provide advice, they did. The Commission did not pull any punches in its report, For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human ights lauded the release of the report, stating that “this report confirms what those of us in the civil and human rights community have long known: that our nation’s system of financing and delivering public education is badly broken and in need of a dramatic overhaul.” Read more »

7-year-old Zora Ball (Photo courtesy Harambee Institute.)

This past week, at age seven, first grader Zora Ball became the youngest person to create a mobile application video game. First off, talk about impressive – when I was seven, a successful day included dancing to the Spice Girls on my bed in my pajamas and Dunkaroos in my lunchbox (preferably chocolate). Go Zora!

More importantly, however, let’s use Zora as proof of something really important: that girls can love math and science and be passionate about it, and that programs to show girls that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) can be fun and interesting are vital.

Ball is a first-grader at Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in Philadelphia, PA. She (and the other students in the STEMnasium learning academy) attend class every Saturday and love it – they even come voluntarily on weekends! The program is even currently teaching students Mandarin Chinese – with the idea that students will complete transactions in Philly’s Chinatown. IN MANDARIN CHINESE.

Zora is proof that when little girls are turned on to STEM, they get into it. Take the toy Roominate – it’s a buildable toy house that kids design and wire themselves. Read more »

Whenever I open up Google and there’s a new Google Doodle waiting for me, I’m always a little excited – clicking on it always takes me to a short little game to play, or a fun animation, or information on an awesome historical figure I’ve never even heard of.

And this week was no exception – Wednesday brought me this adorable Doodle, honoring Mary Leakey:

Mary Leakey was a British archaeologist and anthropologist who discovered the first fossilized skull of Proconsul, an extinct ape now believed to be an ancestor to humans, among a number of other really cool things.

As a kid, Leakey had an adventurous spirit. Her interest in archeology was sparked at a young age, when her family visited Les Eyzies where another archeologist was excavating a cave. When her family moved to France, she found a mentor in Abbe Lemozi, the village priest, who toured caves with Mary to view prehistoric paintings. Read more »

Hats off to Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, who announced an impressive plan to invest in strengthening the state’s education system, including not only the K-12 and higher education systems, but early education as well. The Governor recommends that $350 million be targeted over four years to expand and improve the state’s early education and care system. This investment would eliminate the state’s waiting list of nearly 30,000 children who need but cannot currently access child care assistance, expand the state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) to help early educators and providers offer higher-quality experiences to children and families, increase educational programs and supports for parents and family members, and strengthen efforts to provide comprehensive support to children and families. In addition, new school finance funding would be used to incentivize school districts to offer prekindergarten for four-year-olds.

In order to raise the revenue necessary to support these fundamental education initiatives, Governor Patrick, in his state of the state address, proposed to increase the state income tax by one percent, to 6.25 percent. He also proposed to double personal exemptions and eliminate certain itemized deductions in an attempt to distribute the burden of the tax increase based on ability to pay.        Read more »

Have you seen Brooklyn Castle yet? If not, head out and see it ASAP. It’s an incredibly uplifting story of the chess team at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, New York – a team that started in the 1990s and, 20 years later, is one of the most feared teams in the world of competitive chess.

The movie tells the stories of five members of the team, against the back story of a year in the life of the team amidst continual budget cuts to New York City schools. The film depicts how the cutbacks affect kids -- not only on the chess team, but throughout the school. It’ll inspire you and make you walk through Chinatown at 10 PM on a Friday ranting about the importance of extracurricular activities. Read more »

On Wednesday, October 10, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of UT Austin’s undergraduate affirmative-action admissions program. The vast majority of students are admitted under the state’s Top Ten Percent Plan, which requires UT Austin to admit all Texas residents who rank in the top ten percent of their high-school graduating classes. The University also admits a small percentage of its students through a separate process that involves careful, holistic review of all aspects of an applicant’s qualifications, including such things as leadership experience, special talents, work experience, community service, languages spoken at home, family responsibilities, extracurricular activities, and race. It is this modest consideration of race as part of a holistic review that is before the Supreme Court.

Less than ten years ago, in its review of the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions plan, the Supreme Court outlined the many benefits of diversity in higher education. The Court recognized that racially diverse educational environments reduce stereotypes by exposing students to diverse individuals. That diversity helps students encounter a wide range of ideas and experiences, which improve the quality of the education that they receive and help prepare them to be leaders in an increasingly diverse society. Historically, affirmative-action policies have promoted not only racial but also gender diversity, helping eliminate barriers to women’s entrance into historically male-dominated fields such as engineering and computer science. And many educational institutions, and many state universities in particular, have come to value the benefits of diversity as being critical to the educational mission of cultivating civic, government and business leaders. Read more »

In honor of Labor Day, here’s a snapshot of how working women are faring in today’s economy, by the numbers.

• Percentage of college graduates earning bachelor’s degrees who are women: 57.
• Percentage of students earning master’s degrees who are women: 60.
• Years of college that a man must attend, on average, to earn approximately the same as a woman with a four-year degree: 2.
• The typical number of cents paid to a full-time, year-round woman worker for every dollar paid to her male counterpart: 77.
• The typical number of cents paid to an African-American full-time, year-round woman worker for every dollar paid to a white, non-Hispanic man: 62.
• The typical number of cents paid to a Latina full-time, year-round woman worker for every dollar paid to a white, non-Hispanic man: 54.

Math is important. It seeps into our everyday lives in ways we don’t even think about. We all – well, some of us - know the important feeling of triumph after successfully creating and sticking with a budget (when that happens, I personally feel like draping a flag over my shoulders and doing a victory jog around my neighborhood), or decoding important statistics on our own. Not to mention that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers are relatively well-paid, and more women in STEM fields could help close the wage gap between men and women – women make only 77 cents to every dollar men make.

Too many girls steer clear of STEM courses, beginning at an early age. Even though women make up a majority of college and graduate students, only 19% of physics bachelor’s degrees and 16% of master’s degrees in engineering and engineering technologies have gone to women. Girls are presented with a stereotype that girls won’t do well in math from an early age, and 57% believe that they would have to work harder in a STEM career to be taken seriously. Popular chains among teenage girls create t-shirts that advertise that the wearer is “Allergic to Algebra”. Even teachers have bought the hype. High school math teachers tend to rate female students’ math abilities lower than those of their male peers, even when test scores are comparable. In universities, women face blatant sexism and uncomfortably pervasive objectification of women in their departments.

So how do we fix this? Well, for a start, we need more female role models and mentors. In 2005, women made up only 19% of all full-time math faculty! Which is why I’m thanking god for Winnie Cooper. Read more »

Since we’re smack dab in the middle of back-to-school season, I thought I’d talk about a couple of STEM-related things this week. In case you’re wondering what STEM is, it stands for science, technology engineering and math, and it’s no secret that women are under-represented in those fields. I want to start with a story I caught on Monday – it’s a blog post from Jezebel on Danica McKellar, also known as Winnie Cooper from the TV show The Wonder Years. After The Wonder Years went off the air, McKellar studied mathematics at UCLA and published four math books aimed specifically at girls.

With titles like Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss and Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail, the books can initially come off as a little too ditzy for some. I’ve read some blog comments about people wondering whether this is the way we want to try to get girls involved in mathematics and STEM fields, by taking the conversation to a very stereotypically girly place. In McKellar’s latest book, Girls Get Curves, which tackles geometry, she describes some real-world uses of geometry as such:

“Geometry is responsible for the shape of the house you live in, the cars on the road, the shoes on your feet, and even the book in your hands. Diamond rings wouldn't be nearly so sparkly without the study of angles, and your favorite dress wouldn't fit nearly as well without the science of curves.”

When I was studying geometry, I couldn’t have cared less about diamond rings. But, I also had terrible math anxiety and always fell behind most of my classmates in every math class I took. Read more »

Amber and her daughter

This week on High School Moms, the focus of the show was the Florence Crittenton School’s first-ever prom. It was completely planned by the students with some help from the community, including hundreds of donated prom dresses and free hair, nails, and make-up services donated by a local beauty school. The young moms (and moms-to-be) were so excited about it.

In this episode we met Carla Garcia, a 19-year old mom of a 3-year old boy, and Amber Martinez, a 17-year old mom of a 2-year old girl. When Amber introduced herself she said that her mom was a teen mom, as was her grandmother,  and she said, “I am going to stop the cycle.” I believe she will, not just because she is so self-aware and is quite the go-getter, which she appears to be based on her leadership role in the prom planning, but also because thankfully, she attends a school where she is encouraged to see graduation as a reality and college as a possibility worth pursuing. Read more »